Telling the Map

by Christopher Rowe

  “Deux.” Two fingers, and Maggie inhaled mightily, began leaning forward. She felt Lydia, who was standing directly behind her and holding her upright in the start house, begin to loosen her hold on the seat post.

  “Un,” and there was one finger now, held parallel to the ground, directly in front of her eyes, and Maggie’s heart beat three times before the Owl said, “Commencez!” and pulled his hand away, leaving her path down the ramp of the start house unobstructed.

  She stood on the pedals, forcing all of her weight and strength into a down stroke on the right and pulling up slightly with her left hand to maintain her line. Lydia shouted something behind her but whatever it was lost in the roar of the crowd gathered in the plaza at the center of Lexington. Thousands of people had gathered, the most people Maggie had ever seen in one place in her life, by far, far outnumbering the crowds they’d seen at Bowling Green and Pleasant Hill.

  Maggie begin building up speed, but immediately had to bleed some off for a sharp left turn around a stone pillar topped, incongruously, with a statue of a traveller mounted on a camel. David Bonheur, who had gone over the course with all the riders in the morning meeting, had said it was a good sign, meant to bring luck to travelers.

  On she flew.

  Through the grid of city streets with their towers, then out a broad boulevard lined with trees and enormous houses, building speed, always building speed, headed for the river and the sketchy descents and tortuous climbs the race’s designers had scheduled in a clear attempt to make this the day the general classification would blow apart. Today was the day the race’s real leaders would establish themselves, as sprinters like Michael would struggle and fall down the overall placings and time-trial specialists and climbers like Maggie and Nicholas would form a select group minutes ahead of the bulk of the riders.

  That was the state of the race. That was the supposed point of the extraordinary effort Maggie found herself putting forth. That was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Time. She needed to build up time ahead of the rider starting behind her and avoid coming to the river in sight of the woman ahead of her on the road. She needed time alone to break every rule her father had ever set down, to break actual laws enacted by the Commonwealth and by the Federals. She needed time to speak to her mother, and this time, she would have answers.

  She was doing it. She knew instinctively that she was riding well, was riding extraordinarily well. She could feel it in the way she carved out the turns, leaning almost recklessly into them and then standing and coming back up to speed on the straightaways. She could feel it when she sped down the narrow roads that led to the river, trusting to skills that had taken years to develop so that she could ride faster, faster down the hills than anyone else would dare. And she could especially feel it in the climbs.

  She had picked out her spot. She knew exactly where she would come to a stop and, while incidentally losing any chance of taking a win on the day’s stage, attempt to make contact with the river woman. It was a few miles ahead. It was three more descents. It was two more climbs.

  When the road turned upward, Maggie could not help but smile. She remembered what Lydia had said about her possibly being among the best climbers in the world and her own thoughts about confidence and faith, and she thought to herself that it was neither of those things that was propelling her up the hillsides at astonishing speeds. It wasn’t confidence or faith or strength or skill, none of those things alone at least. More than anything, it was glory.

  Maggie gloried in climbing hills on her bicycle. She gloried in the pain and the suffering that led to the joy of summiting. She gloried in excelling at something that most people, even most fellow cyclists, shuddered at even attempting.

  She danced, always on the ascents, she danced on the pedals.

  Maggie saw the jersey of the Mexican rider disappear around a river-bottom curve up ahead and realized that she had timed everything perfectly. The rider ahead of her would be struggling up the final climb of the day before turning back to Lexington, while the riders behind her, she was confident, were long minutes away, left behind by the finest riding Maggie had ever done.

  She had no time to think about any of that, though, as she clicked out of the pedals and leaned her bicycle against a tree at the roadside. The river was a dozen yards away, and Maggie cursed at the tangle of brush and vines that choked that little distance. It would take valuable time to get to the muddy bank, time she—

  A pillar of green water rose out of the river’s slow running surface, refining itself into a woman who strode directly through the undergrowth toward Maggie.

  Today, the river woman was more distinct. Maggie saw that she wore a cyclist’s kit, even to the point of holding a helmet under one arm.

  I watched you through the camerastats, Maggie heard in her mind. I’ve turned them away from here for now.

  “You watched me race?”

  You are better than I ever was. You are extraordinary.

  Time.

  “Thank you,” said Maggie, her voice almost failing her, wanting to protest, fighting back tears, cursing time. “We only have a moment. I need you to tell me whatever it is you’ve been trying to tell us. Why have you risked so much for all of us to contact Michael and me?”

  The river woman, her mother or some part of her mother, stretched out her hand, and again, Maggie found herself engulfed in water that somehow sustained her instead of killed her. She started to protest, but then an image came into her mind and she came as close to gasping as she could with her mouth and lungs full of water.

  She saw a man.

  She saw the chains trailing from his wrists and ankles as he struggled away from her, saw him stumbling, saw him gaining his feet and moving painfully slowly toward a wide brown river, the largest river Maggie had ever seen.

  The man turned, but he needn’t have for Maggie to recognize her father. In her mind, Maggie saw Brother Theodore Hammersmith, a prophet of the Lord, rushing to drown himself in the muddy waters of the Ohio.

  Chapter Eleven

  The inn in Lexington was large enough that each team had been given a private dining room. Team America’s was furnished with a long low oak table, and one entire wall was a limestone fireplace set with kindled split wood but unlit this warm evening. The six riders were relaxing around the table after an enormous meal, idly listening to David Bonheur talk over the events of the day.

  “Were there disappointments? Yes. Maggie, you started out much too strong and didn’t manage a top ten, which we were hoping for.”

  The team heartily booed the Frenchman, and the usually quiet Telly even tossed a half-eaten roll at the assistant director. David raised his hands in mock defense, letting his stern visage crack into an enormous smile. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I cannot think of a better day for any team at a race of this size.”

  Maggie looked down at the polka dot jersey she had kept by a single point over her closest rival, rewards of her fast start and grim ride home after the riverbank encounter. Beside her, Michael was resplendent in green, as there had been no change in the points competition for the sprinters. And then of course there was Nicholas, decked out now in the yellow jersey of the race leader, his by dint of winning the day’s stage by just over a full minute. The race was not tracking a separate teams competition, like many races did, but Maggie knew that David had calculated the summed times for each of the squads and that if there had been such a contest, they would have been leading it as well. They were thoroughly dominating the race.

  Samantha, sitting across the table from Maggie, caught her attention. “What’s up with you two, anyway?” asked the tall woman. “This is your first national race and you’re both in leaders jerseys, and here you sit all glum. I told Jordan I expected Michael to be down in the bar dancing with the local girls!”

  “Or picking fights with the other sprinters, eh, Crash?” added Jordan.

  Michael’s smile was thin. He was obviously as distracted as Maggie
by what she had told him in the scant minutes they’d managed alone in their room after the race. They hadn’t had time to talk about what the vision she’d had of their father meant, or what the river woman’s last obscure words meant, either—He won’t listen to me. This is coming.

  The door opened and Lydia Treekiller entered, looking distracted, worrying at some twisted bit of black in one fist. She had been at a meeting of all the team directors, planning the next day’s crossing of the Licking River, the only serious challenge on the route. The room quieted, but instead of taking a seat, Lydia waved at the twins. “You two, there’s a man here to see you. He’s waiting for you outside your room.”

  Maggie and Michael exchanged worried looks, and it was obvious to Maggie that her brother had no more idea who the visitor might be than she did. But then Lydia opened her fist, revealing what she held there. A crow’s feather.

  When the twins made it to their room on the second floor, they found Japheth Sapp crouched in the dark hallway, back to the wall and sitting on his heels. His broad-brimmed hat was sitting on the floor beside him.

  He rose in one smooth motion and nodded at them. “I understand congratulations are in order. Y’all are all the talk down at home.”

  “Let’s go inside,” said Maggie, nodding at Michael to lead the way into their room. Once inside, she and Japheth each took a seat on one of the beds, while Michael leaned against the wall beside the window.

  “What’s happened?” Michael asked. “Why are you here?”

  Maggie started to protest her brother’s rudeness, but Japheth held up a peaceable hand. “As to your first question, I’ve got the same one for you two. Which more or less answers your second one. I came to find out what’s been found out. And to tell you a little bit of something I’ve learned since I last saw you.”

  Michael said, “This is getting ridiculous. You might as well have come with Lydia into the dining room downstairs since so many people know so much of what’s happening. We might as well tell the whole team. We might as well tell that Owl who’s running this race.”

  Japheth said, “That Owl is kin to me, as it happens, and he always knows more than what he’s letting on. I’d advise you to treat him as an ally, if an unwitting one. He is no friend of the Federals and is a great enemy of Tennessee.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Michael.

  “What it’s got to do with anything, young man,” replied Japheth, “is everything. The Federals and the Voluntary State are the two obstacles you’ll have to overcome if you’re to help rescue your father.”

  Maggie and Michael spoke at once, but Michael quickly quieted, deferring. “How do you know anything about that?” she asked.

  “I don’t, not precisely,” said Japheth. “But I know that you know. Or I’m guessing you do, but it’s an educated guess. A man came to me two nights ago, a man your father and I had placed among the Reenactors in the west to keep an eye on them. He judged it important enough to leave his post and run himself ragged over a hundred miles to find me and tell me about what happened at the Obelisk.”

  “The wreck?” asked Michael. “What about it?”

  Maggie was more interested in learning how and why her father and Japheth Sapp had either the desire or the means to be placing spies anywhere, much less among Reenactors, but Japheth answered Michael before she could speak.

  “Not the wreck. The contact. The latest of many attempts your mother—if that’s what she is—has made to reach out to you two and to others over the last year or so.”

  “It’s her,” said Maggie quietly. “I believe that—I know that now.”

  Japheth Sapp’s hard features softened a bit. “You know, I didn’t. I thought your father was right, that it was an assault on him, an attack. But now I think it’s her, too.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Michael. “What others are you talking about? Who has . . . that woman contacted besides us?”

  Maggie said, “Lydia Treekiller for one,” and told Japheth about the letter in a few words.

  Japheth reached inside his long coat and pulled out a bundle of papers tied with string.

  “When these come,” he said, “Mr. Pelly always brings them out to the lake himself instead of trusting them to one of his daughters, blind as he is.”

  Maggie reached out for the packet of letters, but Michael snatched them from Japheth’s had first. He quickly scanned the top one, not bothering to untie the string, then handed them all over to Maggie. “It’s her writing,” he said. “But that could be faked. Anything can be faked.”

  Her brother often wore the cloak of cynicism. But she knew inside his faith was strong. She knew him in the way only a twin could, better than he knew himself. He wanted to believe. He was afraid to.

  That she understood too.

  Maggie set the bundle on the bed beside her. “What is the substance of these, Mr. Sapp?”

  “Oh, there’s little to surprise you in there. She mainly asks me to look after the two of you, and to give you any help you need when the time comes for you to go and rescue your father.”

  “Rescue him?” asked Michael. “Rescue him from what?”

  “From the chains that bind him,” said Maggie simply. “That’s what she showed me in the vision, isn’t it?”

  Japheth Sapp shook his head. “You’d have to tell me what vision you’re talking about.”

  Maggie explained, telling him about the visitations she’d had with the river woman both at Shaker’s Landing and earlier that afternoon during the time trial. The only detail she left out was Nicholas’s presence on the first occasion. She saw Michael staring at her curiously during her recitation.

  “The Federals and the Voluntary State,” said Japheth. “The chains and the Ohio River. Everything points to your father’s incarceration at the internment camp near Mayfield, just upriver from where your race finishes tomorrow. He must be planning an escape. A sort of escape.”

  “Impossible,” said Michael. “He would never contemplate suicide.”

  Maggie started to say that going into a river polluted by Athena’s machines was not suicide, but Michael spoke on and over her.

  “And he would never give himself up to the Voluntary State, either. He’s spent our whole lives preaching against it.”

  “Not just preaching,” said Japheth. “Working. Working against it. Your father is one of the deadliest enemies Athena has in the Commonwealth, for all that he refuses to work with the Federals or any other authority. That’s almost certainly why they took him. He didn’t lie to you, he really was headed into the mountains on a mission trip. But he had more than one mission, and I’m certain that it was his most recent successes against Tennessee that caused the Federals to finally take him. They want to know what he knows.”

  “Why doesn’t he just tell them?” asked Maggie.

  Japheth looked troubled. “I think he might have, once. Now, though . . .”

  The twins looked at one another.

  “What do you mean? You know something more that you’re not telling us, don’t you?” demanded Michael.

  The older man hesitated for a moment and then said, “It’s this. I’ve seen him. I’ve seen your father as recently as three days ago. From a distance, anyway.”

  “In the prison?” asked Maggie while Michael cursed.

  “Yes. We’ve had it under surveillance for months now, but it took a long time for us to identify your father. He’s . . . different now.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Maggie, putting what she hoped was a calming hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  “This is why I’m here. Your father is too important to our movement to lose, but all our efforts to reach him have come to nothing. We’ve smuggled prisoners out of that camp before, and even smuggled people in, but he won’t listen to anyone besides the creature that the Federals have him tending.”

  “What kind of creature?” demanded Michael. “What do you mean he won’t listen to anyone?”

&nb
sp; “Japheth,” said Maggie. “Tell it plain. And tell all of it.”

  Japheth nodded. “This encampment is a holding facility built by the Federals originally to contain and study agents and artifacts of the Voluntary State. Over time, they also started housing other prisoners there, the people they describe as rebels. Friends of your father’s and mine, to be direct. There’s nothing in it of rehabilitation, obviously, or even punishment, really. It’s just a place to stick people, people and things, that trouble them.”

  “But something’s changed,” said Maggie. “Or else you wouldn’t be here tonight. Else you wouldn’t have flown us to Paducah in the first place.”

  “We believe the Federals are going to remove your father and several others from the facility tomorrow night and take them out of the Commonwealth altogether. Probably back east someplace. Someplace inaccessible to us, at any rate.”

  “A creature,” growled Michael.

  “Yes, I was getting to that. The Federals have captured one of Athena’s larger pets and interred it in a large pit in the camp. Your father lives in a tent next to the pit and feeds the thing, spends his days shoveling coal over the side and, I think, talking to it.”

  “Coal?” asked Maggie, incredulous. “You mean it’s a coal mole? Those things are real?”

  “As real as the telephones or the sky bears or the Commodores themselves, yes. It’s how she powers her state, sending those things wriggling along the ore lines in the mountains, eating up the coal and storing the energy in it in their bodies somehow. The Federals believe they’re killed outright when they return to Tennessee. ‘Harvested’ is the word they use.”